ED Releases 2025 Data on U.S. Universities’ Foreign Funding

The Education Department announced Wednesday that U.S. colleges and universities received $5.2 billion total in large foreign gifts and contracts in 2025. Including state and non-state entities in these countries, Qatar gave the most, at more than $1.1 billion, followed by the U.K., at $633 million, and China, at $528 million, the department said in a news release.

If a foreign source provides an institution more than $250,000 in a year, Section 117 of the Higher Education Act of 1965 requires the institution to report the payment to the federal government. The department recently launched a public reporting portal that, as of Wednesday, includes new data and “data visualization capabilities,” ED said in the release.

“Thanks to the Trump Administration’s new accountability portal, the American people have unprecedented visibility into the foreign dollars flowing into our colleges and universities—including funding from countries and entities that are involved in activities that threaten America’s national security,” U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in the release.

The portal provides cumulative foreign funding figures since 1986; it does not break down the gifts and contracts by year. The 2025 figures are from the department’s news release.

The American Association of University Professors raised concerns about the fact that Palantir helped the department develop the reporting portal. Palantir is a controversial artificial intelligence and data analysis company that also serves the U.S. military and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The 2025 data includes disclosures institutions submitted through Dec. 16, the release said.

The institutions that received the most funds were Carnegie Mellon University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, both at nearly $1 billion, Stanford University at more than $775 million, and Harvard University at over $324 million, the release said. “Additionally, between February 28, 2025, and December 16, 2025, more than $2 billion in reportable gifts and contracts were reported late, in direct violation of statutory requirements,” it said.

In an email, a Carnegie Mellon spokesperson ascribed its top recipient spot to its Qatar campus, which it operates “in full compliance with all applicable U.S. laws.”

“The costs of operating the CMU-Q campus are underwritten by the Qatar Foundation, pursuant to agreed-upon annual budgets, which are reported each year to the Department of Education, as required by law,” the spokesperson wrote. “More than 90% of those funds are spent in Qatar to operate the campus there. Since CMU-Q opened its doors in 2004, more than 1,400 people from around the world have received a Carnegie Mellon education that would otherwise be inaccessible to them.”

An MIT spokesperson said “MIT research on campus, regardless of funding source, is open and publishable, with the results available to scientists worldwide and not only in a particular country or countries,” adding that “we follow all federal laws in accepting and reporting any such gifts or contracts.”